This is maddness! I was a film major!

How can I have so many DVDs that even with half my collection could be strewn about the house and the other half in my room still looks like a lot, yet I have nothing that I want to watch? How can I, a film graduate, have absolutely nothing to suit my every mood? I can recommend movies to other people and have a quote ready for nearly every situation, but when it comes to me, I'm drawing a blank!

The only solution I can think of is to buy more movies, but that's how I got into this predicament in the first place! I have old favorites to fall back on, sure, but this decision is already a half an hour in the making (only because I was distracted by blogging and the iTunes Music Store) and I can't take half and hour to decide on an old favorite, that would be admitting defeat!

My Videographer Bailed...

My videographer, who's been planning on taping the wedding for months now, just bailed because her boyfriend's childhood friend is getting married that day too. With just under two months until the wedding, and with 08/08/08 being a fairly popular wedding date, there's no way that I can get a professional at the last minute like this. I'm forced to ask my video/film major friends who are already coming to do it for me. She's not even finding a replacement for herself, I have to. I also have to find equipment for them. I'm a little pissed and pretty hurt.

Randomness...

I'm going to Maine this weekend. I have to be in the office at half past the crack of dawn (6:30am). I'm also driving my car and Boss is paying for gas. This will be one interesting 10-hour drive...

I know what the IRS Gas Mileage Allowance is and I'm not telling you :-P

Even though schools teach kids to write their name and addresses at a young age, doesn't mean that they think about putting their full address on forms when they're signing up for things...

Air Conditioning is pretty much the best thing ever, next to Chik-fil-a chicken sandwiches.

I need to capture footage so I can earn a few extra bucks.

I need more money period. :(

Trader Joe Insulated Bags = Good Value

Today I found out that I got more than my money's worth for my $2 Trader Joe insulated bag.

I've been using it to take my lunch to work in and for the most part, have only been taking water in my bottle from Old Navy (it's the plastic you couldn't shatter if you wanted to with the screw-on top) in the bag. Today, I decided to put soda in another version of the water bottle, one with a top that you can pop open in addition to screwing on. When I got to work, I had an interesting surprise: a large soda puddle in the bottom of my lunch bag. :-O
Lunch was fine, everything in there was in tupperware or ziploc sealed bags. I'm still not sure how the soda managed to escape but the bag was the real surprise. In addition to keeping cold food cold and hot food hot (not at the same time of course, that would be simply amazing!), this bag is also totally and completely liquid proof. There was absolutely no evidence of leakage on the outside of the bag and most importantly: not in my new car!!!

I was able to just dump the soda out, pour more water in, swish it around to get all the soda drops out, and then pour the water out again. I was also able to turn it completely inside out and stick outside in the 100+ degree heat of June in Maryland to dry. It may have dried in as quickly as ten minutes, but I actually went out to get it a half an hour later :-P

New Car, Wedding Shoes, Could This Week Get Better?

It's only Monday and I'm already having a fabulous week! I got my new car over the weekend and love it! It's a 2008 Toyota Matrix, 1,500 miles for $13K. I don't think I'd have gotten a better deal if I had sold my soul to the devil, except maybe he'd have thrown in a cosmic doughnut with it... ;)

Megan's out here spending the summer at my house (well part of the summer, that's another entry for another day). It's like being back in middle school! The first night she spent the night on my bedroom floor and we talked until 2am even though we had to get up and go to work in the morning. Then we moved the futon into my room and we've been sharing that since. The other night we were up until 4am playing Brain Age 2 on my DS (she loved the piano play training feature) and before that we were coloring the kids menus we'd gotten at Outback earlier that night.

Then, today after work, my wedding shoes arrived! Dan and I each designed our own Chuck Taylor high-tops on their website (his are different than mine but they still go with the color scheme of the wedding) and we'll be wearing them for the ceremony. Until then, mine will sit in their beautiful box and not get dirty. I knew they were coming today, so I was in a rush to get home, though I did take the long way so I could stay in my new car a little bit longer ;)

The weather outside is gorgeous and the pool is so close to being a swimable temperature for me. I had leftover steak for lunch (yummy!) and checked all my favorite websites (the new and improved Bmasher/Nukoda forums, and of course uploaded pictures to Facebook). Now, the pool is beckoning and asking me to clean it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it while it's still warm out and will want to get in when I'm done, my sister just got home and I'm suppose to teach her how to drive a stick-shift (well, "teach" is not the right word, she knows how so pretty much she's just "practicing" with someone else in the car). The pool may have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday, which is fine because it's suppose to get even warmer later this week.

More pics, lol :)

Today was a good day :)

My boss called me yesterday to make sure that I could shoot with him at "the stadium" today. I could, since I'm not in school and have nothing better to do with my time, it also beats sitting around in the office all day. I assumed it was Camden Yards since it's baseball season not football season and MASN hires my boss as a freelance videographer for occasional baseball events. I figured we'd be in a room somewhere, nowhere near the field, or maybe even up in the stands. We were suppose to just be getting sound-bites and a voiceover, nothing big.

This is where we ended up...


We were in the bullpen. To shoot. We walked down through right field to get there. I was on the field. We got set up and hung out in the bullpen while we waited for four players from the '83 Oriole's to show up. I, of course, got pictures :)


White balancing for daylight...



Close-up of the number above my head in the last picture...



The lineup!!!



Hanging out in the bullpen :)



Walking through right field.

Wedding Plans

The wedding plans are coming along beautifully. The old dress was too small so I needed to get another one. It wasn't a big deal because I only paid $70 for the old dress on ebay and I'll be putting it back on ebay anyway. The new dress cost $56 on ebay and is even more gorgeous than the old dress! It's from Casablanca Bridal, which is a snooty company that doesn't even list dress prices on their website. I did a little more sleuthing and found that their dresses don't really sell below $500 new. Usually they're sold between $500 and $1,000. So yeah, I got an awesome deal and a beautiful dress. We got it a size too big on purpose so that it could be altered to fit like a glove.

DF and I ordered our shoes yesterday, I'll post pictures when they arrive. We each designed our own pair of high-top Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars (they match our color scheme, but they also have our personalities). My mom was totally cool with me wearing sneakers. My grandmother on the otherhand...we'll just say that when she refers to my shoes, she calls them "flats" not "sneakers" ;)

We're also going to start printing and mailing invitations veeeery soon. I can't wait! I've actually been looking forward to this part, mostly because it helps make the whole thing seem real. We've had the wedding postponed several times already and now everything is finally happening, sometimes I realize that we're actually making plans that are going to stick, they aren't up in the air. I'm sooooooooo excited, I can't even put it into words. XD

I wish I could say that they bridal party was coming along as well as everything else. There's been some drama going on and that's all I can really say right now. I'm almost torn between being a good friend and being a bride's who's finally going to have her wedding. I'm pretty sure I know what needs to be done and I'm going to do it (there WILL NOT be any drama at the wedding or reception. Period.), it's just a matter of finding the right time and the right words before it's too late.

Aaaaaanyway, we have the church, the hall (catering and bar included), the photographer, the videographer, the tuxes, the dress, the rings, and now the shoes. We are almost completely set. Once we've sent out invitations, we'll have guests! :)

Above and Beyond

For the last two weeks or so, we've been putting together a marketing package at work for the show to send/give to potential sponsors. It's been coming together kind of slowly, since we've never put one of these together before. I designed a page layout for the whole package based off the website so it all looks consistent, they loved it and we're using it! I also started adding graphics and pictures, with some input from Brainiac and Mystique about which page they should go on, etc. We loved what we had so far, but several pages still needed work.

Then, last week, our editor ran into a representative of a rather large company (national company is all I'm going to say) who says that his company has money set aside specifically for the sponsorship of educational children's programming. *GASP* Editor told him about our show and the guy loved the idea and wants to pitch it to his boss. *DOUBLE GASP* That was Friday. Over Saturday and Sunday, Mystique and I were on the phone and e-mailing each other constantly, scrambling to finish our marketing package in time to send it to this guy.

Now, Monday morning, after we sent the package to the guy and are waiting for him to call back (he's very busy, national company and all), we're 98% done with the marketing package. There are only a few tweaks left to do, change some wording here, add a small graphic there, and then we can start sending it out to everyone and their mother (which I've already been doing, but to people I know so I can show off my work XD) and ask for money.

They love the work that I've done and are soooo appreciative of the time that I've put into it as well. Boss even called from his shoot in Buffalo to say, "So I hear you did some awesome work last night!" which is his way of saying "great job" lol. So pretty much I have a couple of days off coming to me plus a bonus was mentioned so we'll see...I love that they're happy with all the work I've done and acknowledge that I did a great job for them and put in a lot of time. My other jobs were not this good to me!